Bodacious Space Pirates #7

Welcome to Winter Watch, a look at the latest anime season. This time we continue to watch and observe Bodacious Space Pirates as we see Marika continue to learn about being a pirate captain.

Episode 7: The Peace Does Not LastSummary: Marika is quickly becoming overwhelmed at trying to find a good balance between her school life and her pirate captain life. Just as she planned on having a day to relax she's ferried back to the Bentenmaru to do yet another pirate show.Air Date: Feb 25, 2012Run Time: 24:09

Warning: This article may contain spoilers. We recommend watching the episode HERE first.

As to be expected Marika continues to wrestle with the complex issue of finding a balance between school and being a pirate captain. Her grades are slipping but she’s still unwilling to just give up on her school life in order to pursue her ambitions of being a captain. As she’s trying to work she is again ferreted to the Bentenmaru to do another show. This occurs concurrently with one her friends talking to Chiaki about her relationship with her mother and why she’s such a driven person. It’s nice but I would have much preferred finding more about the Galactic Empire and what pirates are really about other than providing entertainment to cruise ships.

Firing Up My Laser.

When we get back to the Bentenmaru we discover that the ‘show” this time is a little bit more complex. The cruise ship wants the Bentenmaru to shoot around a trio of escort ships in order to provide a little bit more entertainment for the passengers. Yes that’s right, we’re still led to believe that our skilled crew of pirates are really just a bunch of entertainers. Now here’s where I continue to hold that this show can’t be entirely about fake pitched battles and shows. As Marika is ferried back to the Bentenmaru Kane and Misa suggest that the missions they are doing right now is small time stuff. Also when Marika finally gets to the fake battle her crew informs her to take the show as a serious learning experience. You wouldn’t really tell your rookie captain about the importance of being earnest if you didn’t think you were going to be in a real combat situation in the future. Anyways as to be expect despite some fears everything goes according to plan and Marika successfully boards the cruise ship to loot it. Now by everything goes according to plan I mean minutes later we find out a stowaway from the cruise ship has boarded the Bentenmaru and demands to see Marika personally. I’d say more but the episode ends on this point pushing the reveal of the stowaway to the next episode.

Verdict

At least there’s a laser light show of a space battle but again I can’t really say I found this exciting because I knew the Bentenmaru isn’t actually at risk. Unless my hopes that the space pirates do some actual piracy this is all just going to get really boring real quick. Sure it was a learning experience for both us as the viewer and Marika but it feel no better than say having the characters in a combat situation and things go really…but you find out that it’s all a simulation. You would have felt like the show was wasting your time if it did this the third time. This show rights need to have a little bit more consequence to it if it plans on maintaining my interest. Overall I unfortunately would say this is a skipable episode considering there were no good character building scenes between Chiaki and Marika and neither has the show retconned its disappointing plot twist from the last episode.

I'm having trouble reconciling the show's description of space pirates with its depiction of space pirates. Space pirates are supposed to be licensed criminals who take over other ships in a high stakes battle. So far all we have seen is what appear to be glorified stage shows. It almost feels like the show is building up to a scene where the crew of the Bentenmaru reveals to Marika that space pirates are really just space cruise ship entertainers.

I'm having trouble reconciling the show's description of space pirates with its depiction of space pirates. Space pirates are supposed to be licensed criminals who take over other ships in a high stakes battle. So far all we have seen is what appear to be glorified stage shows. It almost feels like the show is building up to a scene where the crew of the Bentenmaru reveals to Marika that space pirates are really just space cruise ship entertainers.

Hey man...you're preaching to the choir here. I don't like this turn of events at all either and it makes everything the show has been trying to build up feel cheap. Again hopefully things get better and we find out that this is all just to give Marika some experience before the "real" pirating begins.